During its “inclusive language” campaign, California State University-Northridge students lounged in a bouncy-ball pit and held forth about words that hurt their feelings in a so-called “vent tent,” Heat Street has learned after exclusively reviewing documents and video footage.

CSU-Northridge’s event stretched on for an entire week, teaching students about “potentially hurtful phrases” and cautioning that “using non-inclusive language can have a negative affect on others.”

The University Student Union, a student-led nonprofit campus organization, spent more than $1,000 in student fees on the event, according to invoices. Urging students to avoid hurtful language, USU came up with a list of offensive words — and then printed them in huge, all-caps text, hanging the poster on campus regardless of their supposedly triggering potential.

[..] USU also created a spinning wheel of the phrases it deemed offensive, hiring a videographer and prompting students to describe why a word or term could cause emotional harm and what language they’d use instead.

Most students acquiesced. Some suggested that specific words be banned outright.

The article doesn’t quite do it justice. Apparently California State University-Northridge also laid on a ball pit for their infantilised students to sit in and carp on endlessly about their feewings.

Katherine Timpf, who does an excellent job covering the social justice beat for the National Review, reports:

Students at the California State University–Northridge sat around in a big ball pit (which they a called a “vent tent”) and talked about hurtful words and their feelings as part of a school-sponsored inclusive language campaign.

According to video and documents obtained by Heat Street, the campaign lasted for a week, was put on by the University Student Union (USU), and cost more than $1,000 in student fees. It’s not clear exactly how much of that money was spent on the ball pit rental, or if there is any research supporting the idea that sitting in a ball pit while having a discussion provides any educational and/or therapeutic benefits.

It is obscene as it is absurd that the current generation of students in the English-speaking West, living in the most prosperous and technologically advanced age in history and enjoying tools and luxuries undreamed of by their grandparents, have nonetheless been raised to be so self-involved and determined to wallow in their own confected fragility. What are we doing?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

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For an increasing number of universities, re-education (or indoctrination) of students into the cult of Identity Politics is becoming a central part of the induction process

When the young, eighteen-year-old me arrived at Cambridge in the autumn of 2001, there were of course a number of welcome and induction events, ice-breaking activities and Freshers Fairs to attend. But at no point did the University of Cambridge consider it necessary to run a remedial workshop for new students, teaching us how to function in society and engage in civil discourse with our peers. That basic level of understanding was, shockingly, taken for granted.

And this wasn’t just a snobby Oxbridge thing. When I first arrived at Warwick University a couple of years later, I was likewise expected to be able to take care of myself and conduct myself like the fully grown adult that I was. The Warwick Student Union (then a bit loopy but now apparently one of the most snarlingly authoritarian in the country) gave us each a welcome bag which I recall contained a Cadbury Boost bar, a Wilkinson Sword razor and a pack of condoms to help me on my way, but was otherwise happy to stand back while I enjoyed varying degrees of success with each of these gifts without feeling the need to further intervene in my life.

And as it was for me, so it was for thousands more people who went to university as little as a decade ago. Which is partly why it is proving so hard to raise the alarm about what is happening on university campuses today. People see the odd sensationalist headline (often written by a generalist commentator) about comedians being banned or campaigns against statues or the replacing of applause with silent jazz hands, and think that they are puff pieces based on isolated incidents. After all, many people think, I only graduated a few years ago myself, and I never witnessed any of this craziness.

Well, things have changed a lot in the space of a decade, and the alarm is very much justified. Sure, the inexorable growth of statist Big Government and authoritarian crackdowns on free speech have been going on for much longer than a decade – and this blog tirelessly makes the case against censorship in all its forms and for unrestricted free speech. But to deny that something uniquely concerning has recently started to take place on university campuses in Britain and America is to bury one’s head in the sand.

One of the most troubling aspects of this new environment has been the number of universities which, hoping to avoid being embroiled in a wave of hysterical social justice protests such as those which consumed Yale and Mizzou last year, are deciding to come out ahead of the trend and pre-emptively embrace the new Cult of Identity Politics, weaving it into the fabric of their institutions before they are pressured to do so by crazed protesters.

A case in point: California State University San Marcos, which has opened what it calls a “Civility Cafe”, less of a laid-back study lounge and more of a hectoring seminar where any hopeful expectations of free speech are swiftly recalibrated by campus authorities.

CSUSM recognizes students, faculty and staff who display Civility on our campus by conducting themselves with care, respect, and empathy while acknowledging the culture and humanity of others. Like waves through the ocean, our vision is that one simple act will have a ripple effect and a tsunami of civility will take over our campus. We encourage you to identify and nominate students, faculty and staff on campus.

The Civility Cafe, a skill-based workshop, aimed to encourage and educate students on how to engage in civil discourse with their peers.

John Loggins, University of San Diego’s Director of Community-Based Student Leadership and Learning, facilitated the event on Feb. 25 in USU 2310.

[..] Students then participated in an activity designed to increase their empathy and listening skills. Students partnered up and were invited to tell their partner a story about an instance in which they either excluded someone from a community or felt excluded themselves. After students shared their stories, their partner had to tell another student the story they had just heard, but from a first-person perspective.

Loggins then played a video for those in attendance. The film featured Dan Savage, a known advocate for LGBTQIA rights and creator of the It Gets Better foundation. After watching the video, students were asked to reflect and share actions, words or ideologies that trigger negative emotions.

“How we react to triggers says more about us than what triggers us. Try to reflect before speaking out of hurt or anger; this can create more civil discourses,” Loggins said.

Sure, we may not have been the victims of sexual violence. But we can nonetheless be “triggered” by the most minor perceived cultural slights, goes the theory, and we must attend special seminars to train us to manage our reactions when we are so triggered. What literally every generation of human beings before us managed to do (with a little trial and error) since the dawn of history now must be taught as a specific Life Skill by universities more obsessed with micromanaging the lives and daily interactions of their students than imparting a rigorous, valuable academic education.

Unfortunately, this only adds legitimacy to what the Identity Politics practitioners and the New Age Censors are trying to do, giving it the official imprimatur of the university and its leadership team. Rather than obsequiously bowing down to these demands and establishing two safe spaces for every one that was originally demanded, universities should be pushing back on the student activists and telling them that as adults, they are each responsible for managing their own human interactions, and must get out of the habit of looking to an external authority figure to mediate every single dispute or to mete out punishment for what often amounts to thoughtcrime – daring to hold or articulate beliefs which are in any way contrary to the prevailing Identity Politics narrative.

This is the case that the Identity Politics practitioners and New Age Censors need to answer. Why should freedom of speech, expression and thought be more severely curtailed now than ever before at this late stage, when most of the victories for tolerance, civility and equal rights have already been won?

Don’t expect an answer from them any time soon – for they have none. But do expect to see a lot more Civility Cafes popping up, serving flat whites with a sanctimonious side of social justice. It’s what the petty campus tyrants want, and many university administrations – like that of California State University San Marcos – either fully agree with their toxic agenda or are simply too spineless to stand up to them.

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